Education & Technology (and some History)

Linguists Use Modern Technology to Crack 18th Century Code

A team of linguists and computer scientists from America and Sweden have cracked one of the oldest, undeciphered codes in history: the Copiale Cipher. The hand-written work is more than 100 pages in length and is a combination of symbols and letters.

The linguists and computer scientists used a code-breaking technique to ‘crack’ the language – essentially viewing translation as decipherment. While the “breaking” of this linguistic code is a huge breakthrough for linguistics, it still does not solve the issues of translation of older, still-undeciphered languages.

“There are these books and ancient languages of real historical value that contain historical information that we just can’t get out yet, and that’s of interest to a lot of people,” – Dr. Knight